


The Ten Times Daryl Dixon Breaks His Own Heart (And the One Time He Doesn't)

by walkydeads



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Cliche, F/M, Gen, M/M, Melodrama, One-Sided Relationship, Season 2 spoilers, Season 3 Spoilers, mutual unspoken attraction, shitty layout
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-23
Updated: 2014-08-23
Packaged: 2018-02-14 08:41:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2185191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/walkydeads/pseuds/walkydeads
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl's in love with Glenn, Glenn's in love with Maggie. Daryl's got too much pride to entertain his feelings, or maybe too little pride to act on them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ten Times Daryl Dixon Breaks His Own Heart (And the One Time He Doesn't)

1.  
He knows Maggie and Glenn have been having sex before anyone else does. He sees Glenn a lot more than anyone thinks he does, and he keeps it that way for a reason. The scent clings to them and there’s something strange in the way they look at each other now. Daryl hadn’t been anticipating this. Had been biding his time, so sure that Glenn wouldn’t come across any other more appealing options in the meantime. Waiting for the right time to come forward and say something. The right words. The fear of Merle’s ghost to dissipate. Waiting to find Sophia and be a hero in Glenn’s (everyone’s really, so they wouldn’t object to their courtship) eyes.

Apparently, he’s waited too long.

Even though his head throbs and he’s a little pissed that they can even think about sex under circumstances like these, he gives Glenn a congratulatory pat on the back and cocks his eyebrow at him, implying wordlessly that he knows, and Glenn’s face turns red. He grins nervously and Daryl wants to kiss him.

He goes on another search instead.

2.  
After everything in the barn, after Sophia… well. Daryl’s emotionally exhausted. He’s always emotionally exhausted, though, so perhaps emotionally dead would be a better term. Walking in on Glenn comforting Maggie after it all nearly breaks him. This is partially her fault, after all. Why should she be the one seeking solace in someone else’s arms? Where is there comfort for Carol? For Carl? For himself?

They don’t see him and he closes the door, clutching at his chest. Carol calls to him from the end of the hallway and he’s not obliged to ignore her. Not given what she must be going through right now.

Carol doesn’t love him, he understands. She’s just lonely and broken and fuck, he is too. If they can find comfort in each other, he reasons, it will be fine. The sex is mechanical, emotionless, but at the very least it draws focus for a while. He’s sure to pay enough attention to say her name a few times, sure to touch her like she’s sacred. She probably hasn’t felt anything like that in a while.

When he wakes up in the morning, Carol is gone, and he’s only a little disappointed she understood their arrangement so well.

3.  
Daryl had been - rather evilly - hoping that all the chaos on the farm would tear Glenn and Maggie apart and sent their original group packing from the farm. They’ve already lost so much. Dale. Sophia. Shane. Andrea.

But the remaining Greenes are with them when they leave the farm.

Glenn’s hand is on Maggie’s leg like he’s trying desperately but quietly to reassure her, to keep her there, to keep her from running back. Daryl bitterly thinks she should. Lori’s showing, Andrea’s dead, Carol’s a shell of what a person should be. The women of their group face ill fates. He tells himself he’s not worried about her as much as he’s worried about what the loss of her might do to Glenn, but the truth of the matter is that the stabbing in his heart has eased to a dull ache and he wants Glenn to be happy.

He would much prefer Glenn to be happy with him, but he’ll take what he can get at this point.

4.  
Carol offers him sex again, and he strongly considers it. But the curve of her lips and the glance she throws back to the group huddled around the fire in the yard tells him she knows more - has probably always known - a lot more than she ever let on. So he turns her down, tries to be quick to leave.

Then he realizes he’s running back to take comfort in Glenn. Making sure the kid is all in one piece and safe and content. And that’s not his job, never would. There are already arms around him, making him feel safe and warm and protected.

“How long have you known?” he asks.

“Since he yelled at you about burying our dead, and you looked at him like he was a mystery you had to solve. And like you didn’t want him to cry. Never looked at anyone else that way,” Carol sighs, her arms crossed, eyes scanning the horizon, “Not even me.”

5.  
When they lose Lori, it grips Daryl with fear.

It’s only a matter of time before Maggie ends up that way. Herschel’s already old and down a leg to boot. There’s no counting on him being around when it’s time to deliver her and Glenn’s children. And then there’s gonna be a knife and a gun and a call to make that only Maggie can. He already knows Maggie would do the same thing Lori did. In a heartbeat. It’s foolish, but he can’t help but respect it. He wonders if his own mother would make that sacrifice for him if the circumstances had been the same.

The second he sees the baby, though, all of that dissolves. She is beautiful. The way she reaches out and coos up at him makes him feel like he’s going to shatter. Having a baby in a world like this is so very, very ill-advised, but he can’t hold the birth of something so innocent and pure against it. He smiles wide, without meaning to, and his eyes seek out Glenn’s immediately.

Glenn looks like he’s seeing Daryl for the first time, like he likes what he sees. Bit late for that. Daryl sighs to himself as he hands the baby back over to Beth.

6\.   
He hates to admit it, but being around just Maggie made him dislike her slightly less. It also made him even more jealous, because she was a person worth his respect, someone capable that wasn’t getting in anyone’s way but his.

After five minutes alone with her, he knew no one back at the prison would be willing to commiserate about what a bitch she was.

After half an hour alone with her, he knew he’d be beating himself up every time he mentally wrote her off as a bitch in the future.

When they arrive back at the prison and Glenn’s waiting for her with open arms, he realizes he has nobody to blame for missing out on the good stuff in life but himself, because he’s still too scared to say how he feels even though he’s totally certain of the reaction he’ll get.

7.  
When Maggie and Glenn don’t come back from a run, he curses, waits, paces the floor, lays in his bunk. Anything to keep himself from thinking about what might’ve happened. Not even Carol can calm him.

And then Michonne’s there, saying they’ve been taken to Woodbury, and shit doesn’t exactly look trustworthy with a katana of all things strapped to her back, but if Glenn’s in trouble, he knows he needs to save him. Even though, given everyone else who has volunteered, he should probably stay. He’s the first out the door, the first on his way there. He wants retribution and he wants Glenn home safe. Far as he’s concerned, Merle’s just an unexpected bonus.

But when they make it out and there’s talk of whether or not Merle will be allowed at camp and why not, he feels like he’s on the outside of them. After all this time. It feels like it did when social workers would come to the house and offer to take him someplace better, but dismiss Merle as a lost cause. Everyone had been doing that Merle’s whole goddamn life except him, and he wasn’t about to turn his back now.

He knows Glenn yelling after him, calling his name will ring in his ears for the rest of his life. Glenn wanting him to stay was unexpected. He figured Maggie was only agreeing with him because Daryl was a good shot. But it didn’t really matter. He’d alter the memories and keep them close to his heart to recall on lonely nights, for however much time they had left.

8.  
Getting back to the camp is easy. Dealing with everyone’s reactions to Merle’s presence… not so much. He tries for a very long time to keep things peacable but it’s damn near impossible. All Merle has to do is apologize (which as far as Daryl’s concerned, he’s done the best way he knows how) and all everyone else has to do is forgive him (which, on the other hand, doesn’t seem very forthcoming).

He hopes an apology to Glenn on Merle’s behalf will do the trick, and no matter how much courage it takes to string a sentence together humbly in front of the kid, it doesn’t count for shit. It’s not like he doesn’t think Maggie’s deserving of an apology, too. It’s just that he and Merle were never sure of how to broach that subject with women. They were all too familiar with the locked doors and the pleas for it to stop pouring out from their parents’ bedroom. Daryl was starting to realize that the fire that took his mama probably wasn’t any accident. He hopes Maggie won’t end up the same way, but he can’t begin to apologize for something he feels powerless to stop. And he knows Merle and knows that, for all his cavalier ways, he feels the same on this matter.

When Glenn says ‘I care about her more than I care about me,’ it crushes Daryl. But only a little. Not as much as it would have at the farm or (god forbid) the quarry. But it leaves him achy enough to send him after Merle, to tell him off and that he needs to make things right. And soon enough, Merle’s gone. Like ‘I’m going to bring the Governor’s head back on a pike’ gone. Tough as Daryl knows Merle is, he knows it isn’t gonna go down like that.

It stings when he finds him chewing on some poor bastard’s innards. It dulls every time he stabs Merle in the head. Because all he can think is ‘there were easier ways to put this right’.

9.  
Carol is so good to him that he almost wants to sleep with her again.

She understands loss of a loved one, and more than that she understands the way he shut down after he noticed the ring on Maggie’s finger, freshly cut off a walker. It’s romantic and disgusting and Daryl’s pretty sure the institution of marriage is damn near pointless in the times they live in, but he can’t help but feel like it’s a final door shutting in his face.

He finds it ironic that Glenn asked what they were supposed to tell Carol when he decided to leave with his brother. Carol knows better than anybody what kind of loss he endures, and she would have understood him leaving, would have understood that it should never have been presented as a choice. She’s the one holding him through it as he breaks down in the tombs, crying about a goddamn ring.

At least, she reassures him, his heart hasn’t gone cold. He’s not so sure that’s a good thing.

10.  
Today’s the day of the wedding, and they’ve got a whole stupid ceremony laid out. Carol’s even made a very basic approximation of a cake, and she and Beth fashioned a surprisingly nice dress out of linens. Daryl’s role in this hasn’t been assigned to him; he’s taken it upon himself.   
They’re gonna need actual wedding bands, and he isn’t about to chop them off a walker. There’s plenty of scrap metal in the tool shed so he knows he’ll have what he needs. It’s getting the measurements that’s a bitch. But he and Carol work together, and they eventually manage, even if it is last minute. The ceremony’s already started by the time he starts hammering the scraps into shape. And by the end of it they’re simple, but they’ll do. 

He doesn’t have a pillow to put them on, so he folds his vest up real small before setting the rings on them. Laughing a little as he rushes down the hall, he thinks he’s way too damn old to be a ring bearer, but he’s also pretty sure Carl would rather puke than do it, so he’s really just about the only person for the job. Herschel’s officiating, just getting to their vows when Daryl bursts dramatically through the doors. There’s applause. Glenn’s eyes are wide.

He gives Glenn the thinner of the two, and he slides it on Maggie’s finger. She looks a bit surprised that it fits but smiles gratefully at him. Then she takes Glenn’s band and slides it onto his finger. Daryl steps out of the way and sits, in disbelief that he just signed off on this. But as the crowd bursts into joyous shouts when Glenna and Maggie kiss, he can’t help but smile and clap along.

11.  
“Some wedding, huh?” Glenn says, collapsing beside him on the bench. They’ve been making their own music with empty tubs and a salvaged guitar and Beth’s beautiful voice, singing and dancing and drinking well into the night.

“It’s real great,” Daryl tells him solemnly, taking a sip of his wine. “I’m real happy for you.”

Glenn leans in. Presses a kiss to his cheek. The shock of it alone damn near kills him, “Thank you for the rings,” he whispers, right next to his ear, “I wish I could… Wish there was something I could do that was that kind for you.”

Daryl knows then that he could ask anything of Glenn and he’d be willing. Knows Glenn and Maggie have probably talked about his lovesick nature, and have a decided on a response somewhere between acceptance and pity. Have probably talked about some sort of arrangemnt. But that was never what he wanted. Somehow, knowing that Glenn wants him back to some extent is more than enough. “Just be happy, kid” he says, giving Glenn’s hand a gentle squeeze before getting up and walking back to his cell. 

He sleeps soundly for the first time in months.


End file.
